dumbest missions

[Dimetime35c]

okay we've all had them, ideas that at the time seemed like the best thing ever. but once we have tried for hours to get said idea to actually work we realize, this is the dumbest thing ive ever tried. what are some of your ideas you thought were good but later on you see maybe werent the greatest idea. mine always seem to have to deal with a new way to build my space station parts. seems so simple ill just launch this part and that then once were in orbit ill just detatch this piece and move that one here ect. after hours gone by of trying to get things to simply join i figure out, maybe i should have built this in one piece or launched that piece first

[Specialist290]

Making my first mission to Moho manned, without sending any kind of probe there first to make sure I knew what I was getting into. Hoo boy, was that "fun"...

In a previous save, I also had a kethane miner / transporter that burned far more fuel on a round trip to and from the surface than it carried to the station, which sort of defeated the purpose of having it. I ended up just junking the design entirely.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Specialist290

[WillHop]

I tried inter-planetary travel with no knowledge of phase angles or transfer windows and just burned for Duna. Needless to say, it didn't work...

[Just_Testing]

Trying to build an 'interplanetary ring' like Obi Wan's to take my SSTOs to other planets... nothing worked, I couldn't get the ring into orbit and found it to not be wide enough anyway. I was rather frustrated.

[TheBladeRoden]

Tried to make a ship that could drop used fuel tanks without dropping engines too. Tried to put all fuel in an inner stack, and all engines in an outside ring. Could not for the life of me get it to fly without falling apart.

There was also the time I tried a lander/mothership mission to duna without any RC unit on the MS. Then I put the RC unit on and forgot the solar panels.

Or when I tried using nukes in the atmosphere

[Whackjob]

Trying to build an 'interplanetary ring' like Obi Wan's to take my SSTOs to other planets... nothing worked, I couldn't get the ring into orbit and found it to not be wide enough anyway. I was rather frustrated.

Your interplanetary rings.

I has it.

[Amazonys]

Putting a kethane scanning probe into polar orbit with a static solar panel (because it looked cooler). Then I realized that after some time warp that it had shifted so that the panel was facing *away* from the sun and I was without the sufficient power to turn it back towards the sun.

Oh and then there was that one time that I though I could sled on my fairings in order to land on the saltflats of Minmus. Safe to say that wasn't the smartest idea ever.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

Landing a Tiger Tank on the Mun.

[Geschosskopf]

I got tired of rover wheels always going flat so make a manned version of the Grand Panjandrum as a way to have a rover that didn't need wheels at all.

It worked about as well as the original, except I killed maybe 30 Kerbals before I gave up on the idea

[alacrity]

dumbest mission ever still continues.... I have a bunch of habs and bases all over mun. I am desperate to create non rover transports that I can use to get from one to the other.

Now the dumb part.... I originally planned to bring planes.... to the mun... jets... on the mun... i am a dum ass.

so here I am trying to invent jet like craft for the mun... no air to breath for the engines, no air to push against, nothing for wings to bite on. Ok so then i tried to make mini lifters, but that just created the problem of having to do moon landings over and over. Not optimal.

Next tried more stable rovers... more wheels, outriggers, piles of SAS, fewer wheels, lower builds, higher builds, more weight, less weight. Nothing worked well enough. With bases all over the mun (100's of kloms apart) 25 m/s just is not gonna cut it.

So I need a vehikle with the range and speed of a plane, the ease of use of a rover, and the stabilty for constant reuse

Alacrity

[Odo]

dumbest mission ever still continues.... I have a bunch of habs and bases all over mun. I am desperate to create non rover transports that I can use to get from one to the other.

Now the dumb part.... I originally planned to bring planes.... to the mun... jets... on the mun... i am a dum ass.

so here I am trying to invent jet like craft for the mun... no air to breath for the engines, no air to push against, nothing for wings to bite on. Ok so then i tried to make mini lifters, but that just created the problem of having to do moon landings over and over. Not optimal.

Next tried more stable rovers... more wheels, outriggers, piles of SAS, fewer wheels, lower builds, higher builds, more weight, less weight. Nothing worked well enough. With bases all over the mun (100's of kloms apart) 25 m/s just is not gonna cut it.

So I need a vehikle with the range and speed of a plane, the ease of use of a rover, and the stabilty for constant reuse

Alacrity

RCS bikes or VTOLS.

Ive gotten an RCS bike on the mun to 60+ m/s.

And VTOLS are pretty much reliable anywhere. Minmus Vtols are especially fun.

Plus you have the advantage of if you fly high enough you can be assisted by the mun to carry you to whereever your going. A super temporary orbit. like no periapsis :3

[rpayne88]

dumbest mission ever still continues.... I have a bunch of habs and bases all over mun. I am desperate to create non rover transports that I can use to get from one to the other.

Now the dumb part.... I originally planned to bring planes.... to the mun... jets... on the mun... i am a dum ass.

so here I am trying to invent jet like craft for the mun... no air to breath for the engines, no air to push against, nothing for wings to bite on. Ok so then i tried to make mini lifters, but that just created the problem of having to do moon landings over and over. Not optimal.

Next tried more stable rovers... more wheels, outriggers, piles of SAS, fewer wheels, lower builds, higher builds, more weight, less weight. Nothing worked well enough. With bases all over the mun (100's of kloms apart) 25 m/s just is not gonna cut it.

So I need a vehikle with the range and speed of a plane, the ease of use of a rover, and the stabilty for constant reuse

Alacrity

I don't have time to try this today, but...

You could take a plane, rip off the wings, and add rover wheels (in addition to landing gear) and engines (LFO) pointing downward (make sure Mun TWR is 2.0 or better for a decent climb out.) The idea being to point the A/C (or, rather spacecraft) in the direction you want it to go before taking off. Fire up the downward pointing engines and increase your altitude (ensure it is balanced and that SAS is both on and powered) then fire up the main engines to head in the direction you want to go. Maybe you could use retrograde pointing engines to kill off most of your horizontal velocity when you near your destination. Then just use your downward facing engines to lower your vertical speed to a survivable velocity and use the landing gear brakes to stop. Finally, use the rover wheels to "taxi" the rest of the way to your base.

[WafflesToo]

Designing, constructing, and delivering a Kethane mining and processing facility that consumed all of the kethane from one vein to generate enough fuel to deliver the equipment needed to do it. >_o

[Odo]

I don't have time to try this today, but...

You could take a plane, rip off the wings, and add rover wheels (in addition to landing gear) and engines (LFO) pointing downward (make sure Mun TWR is 2.0 or better for a decent climb out.) The idea being to point the A/C (or, rather spacecraft) in the direction you want it to go before taking off. Fire up the downward pointing engines and increase your altitude (ensure it is balanced and that SAS is both on and powered) then fire up the main engines to head in the direction you want to go. Maybe you could use retrograde pointing engines to kill off most of your horizontal velocity when you near your destination. Then just use your downward facing engines to lower your vertical speed to a survivable velocity and use the landing gear brakes to stop. Finally, use the rover wheels to "taxi" the rest of the way to your base.

Aka a VTOL

[Geschosskopf]

RCS bikes or VTOLS.

Ive gotten an RCS bike on the mun to 60+ m/s.

And VTOLS are pretty much reliable anywhere. Minmus Vtols are especially fun.

Plus you have the advantage of if you fly high enough you can be assisted by the mun to carry you to whereever your going. A super temporary orbit. like no periapsis :3

Mun's gravity is too strong for anything relying on constant upwards thrust to be viable for covering the type of distances Alacrity is talking about. They all take too much fuel just to stay off the ground and RCS is in Mun's gravity also can barely get just itself over a small crater rim, let alone any payload. The easiest way to move from place to place on Mun is to take off into an inclined 10km orbit and wait for Mun to rotate your destination under your path.

[rpayne88]

Aka a VTOL

Look at the date/ time stamps. We post posted the same idea almost simultaneously.

[Merinsan]

Perhaps my dumbest mission involved a "base" on Minmus. I quote base, because it was simply a vertical structure.

That wasn't what was dumb though.

It looked ok, but I decided it was too small and needed to make it bigger. There was a single docking port on top of the structure, so I decided I could launch a new piece and dock it on top.

I spent an hour trying and failing.

Then I decided that maybe Mech-Jeb would help, I downloaded it and installed it, and it just seemed to make it harder. Perhaps I didn't know what I was doing.

I think I spent 3 hours just trying to get this to work before deciding it was impossible.

I then built a new base the size I wanted, and landed it whole on Minmus in about 15 minutes.

[alacrity]

Originally Posted by rpayne88 View Post

I don't have time to try this today, but...

You could take a plane, rip off the wings, and add rover wheels (in addition to landing gear) and engines (LFO) pointing downward (make sure Mun TWR is 2.0 or better for a decent climb out.) The idea being to point the A/C (or, rather spacecraft) in the direction you want it to go before taking off. Fire up the downward pointing engines and increase your altitude (ensure it is balanced and that SAS is both on and powered) then fire up the main engines to head in the direction you want to go. Maybe you could use retrograde pointing engines to kill off most of your horizontal velocity when you near your destination. Then just use your downward facing engines to lower your vertical speed to a survivable velocity and use the landing gear brakes to stop. Finally, use the rover wheels to "taxi" the rest of the way to your base.Aka a VTOL

This is what I am trying to avoid... Vtol is just a fancy way of saying build a rocket that you will jump nearorbit and land over and over.... i want the steerability and landing profile of a plane. or a super high speed rover that doesn't flip over. My mun landings are chancy enough every time with out trying them from 5000 m altitude.

remember that the mission profile is to be able to covers hundreds of kilometers easily and fairly quickly. if I am stuck using rockets from the surface I might as well just build a couple extra stations and just use them and resource transfer points and drop what I need when the orbit aligns for easy insertions. I have a kethane drivenair fleet for Duna, but they are a little limited to a lower altitude. But the mun was my first attempt at this. I still can't think of a work around.

Blimps? No Bouyancy is a mute point.

Planes? Wings are useless

Rover? max controllable speed at about 25 m/s, some of the steeper hills and deeper cliffs are a problem

RCS vectoring thrust? tried this ALOT, and could never balance things.

I will prolly have to break down and use a vtol sub orbital hopper model eventually, but I still feel like I figure out something more survivable for my kerbals/

alacrity

[suzin.felipe]

Mine was a manned mission to Jool with the intention of delivering a ISA Mapsat satellite on every moon.

I knew nothing about Jool, I thought that once in orbit around it, getting to the moons was just like flying from Kerbin to Mun or Minmus. So I set up an orbit 80 km height and was quite surprise when my ship sink in Jool.

[Rage097]

I sent a satillite into the Jool system. in a polar orbit. I don't know what I was expecting, but eventually it got engaged in celestial ping-pong; getting slug around by Vall, Jool, Tylo, Laythe. Eventually I got a laythe encounter...straight into the moon.

[KatzOhki]

Current project in progress: massive Mun Train.

Also my space program has a long history of landing rovers on their tails. Still working that one out.

[StalinislavStalinovich]

I tried to dock 2 base modules by landing one on top of the another ._.

All modules + 3 kerbals were harmed in making of that mission

[Kulebron]

I got an ion-powered probe into clockwise orbit around Jool, tried to encounter Laythe and aerobrake. It flew higher and was thrown out of solar system instead.

Was landing a lunar module and a rover, and decided to put Jebediah into the rover seat. Never flew that ship before at all. With CoG off center I could not control it, R.I.P.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Kulebron

[Technical Ben]

Making my first mission to Moho manned, without sending any kind of probe there first to make sure I knew what I was getting into. Hoo boy, was that "fun"...

In a previous save, I also had a kethane miner / transporter that burned far more fuel on a round trip to and from the surface than it carried to the station, which sort of defeated the purpose of having it. I ended up just junking the design entirely.

This. I've cataloged the escapade on the forums with pictures. Took 3 iterations of the vessel to return to Kerbin, and I left them in orbit as punishment for failing to follow orders.

Most recent is sending 4 rovers to Eve... without parachutes. Because the air resistance is enough to slow them down right? I added some fuel for a powered decent. But did not realize the air friction takes so much extra DV for a landing. one made it in one piece, though tumbled (strange physics on Eve!). So all in all, they are a crumbled mess on Eve now. But they are transmitting, so SUCCESS!

[Just_Testing]

dumbest mission ever still continues.... I have a bunch of habs and bases all over mun. I am desperate to create non rover transports that I can use to get from one to the other.

Now the dumb part.... I originally planned to bring planes.... to the mun... jets... on the mun... i am a dum ass.

so here I am trying to invent jet like craft for the mun... no air to breath for the engines, no air to push against, nothing for wings to bite on. Ok so then i tried to make mini lifters, but that just created the problem of having to do moon landings over and over. Not optimal.

Next tried more stable rovers... more wheels, outriggers, piles of SAS, fewer wheels, lower builds, higher builds, more weight, less weight. Nothing worked well enough. With bases all over the mun (100's of kloms apart) 25 m/s just is not gonna cut it.

So I need a vehikle with the range and speed of a plane, the ease of use of a rover, and the stabilty for constant reuse

Alacrity

I'd be happy to try to work with you on this one, I'm looking to set up a Mun-wide network of things in general myself.